Travel + Leisure has discovered what San Diegans have long known: Balboa Park is a treasured institution and major tourist draw, worthy of a place on the magazine’s list of the nation’s Coolest City Parks.

While noting that New York’s Central Park has much to crow about, the travel magazine’s website points out that many other cities are making notable investments in their parks to help raise their “cool” quotient.

For example, New York City’s Governors Island, with its art installations, 23-foot-high trapeze platform and rock concerts on a sandy beach with Manhattan skyline views, is among the dozen municipal parks on the list, but Central Park is not.

Balboa Park, says Travel + Leisure, has played a key role in making the city desirable for both locals and tourists, from the San Diego Zoo’s 4,000 animals and the park’s panoply of museums to the Old Globe Theatre turning out Broadway-bound plays.

“The park overlooks a seriously beautiful backdrop (the Pacific Ocean) and has buildings so stunning that some exteriors were filmed by Orson Welles to represent the grand fictional estate Xanadu in Citizen Kane,” states an article on the magazine’s website.

The San Diego Zoo's pandas have long been a huge draw for visitors. — UT file photo

According to the Trust for Public Land, Balboa Park is described as San Diego’s single largest tourist draw, generating more than $114 million in spending. While the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau does not track revenues for individual attractions, it does survey tourists on where they go when in San Diego. Balboa Park and the zoo together rank as one of the top attractions, in the same league as SeaWorld San Diego, bested only by the city’s beaches and bays.

San Diego city leaders have already started planning a centennial celebration of San Diego’s 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park, which could cost as much as $75 million. Meanwhile, Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacob has proposed a $35 million plan to remove cars from the park’s central Plaza de Panama and landscape the 2-acre space that would be reserved for pedestrian use.